BFI Flare: Queens of Drama (Alexis Langlois, 2024)

Filmed over the course of five weeks in Brussels, Alexis Langlois' feature debut Queens of Drama is a reflection on the dualistic nature of fame and the often rocky journey artists undergo in their pursuit of success.  This Belgian co-production has already screened at several film festivals, including London and Gent, and it plays at BFI Flare on Wednesday.  Often more odious than melodious, this shrill musical drama follows Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura) and Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), two young women who audition for a cutthroat singing reality TV series that bears more than a passing resemblance to The Voice.

Mimi is selected in the competition and goes on to enjoy a glittering pop career, one largely built on anodyne smash hit "Don't Touch", while Billie is rejected by the show but carves out a name for herself in the underground punk scene.  Langlois weaves a star-crossed romance between these contrasting characters, who make a connection (of sorts) during their brief time together on the TV show.  Also looming large in the story is Mylène Farmer-esque pop star Magalie Charmer (Asia Argento), whose stint at the apex of mainstream music serves as a blueprint for Mimi, who seeks to emulate this stalwart performer's success and longevity.

Despite the very different paths taken by Mimi and Billie, they don't lose track of each other, and the film charts the peaks and troughs of their careers and relationship; a song is never too far away as Langlois attempts to prop up a sagging narrative with musical interludes fashioned by the likes of Yelle, Pierre Desprats, and Louise BSX.  Ultimately, Queens of Drama buckles under the weight of its near two-hour running time, which is padded out by highly repetitive sequences, many of which feature onetime Eurovision contestant Bilal Hassani, who gets way too much screen time as tiresome stan Steevyshady.

Hassani commandeers the film's opening scene in a manner that might sink the hearts of many viewers who, like me, wrongly conclude that they'll have to endure 114 minutes of his grating character; mercifully, Steevy soon makes way for the two protagonists, with the role subsequently functioning more or less as that of a Greek chorus.  Queens of Drama isn't all bad—game newcomers Ventura and Aura both deliver brave, committed performances, and the film is nearly always visually interesting, largely on account of its Day-Glo colour palette—but at least half an hour of it should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Small Hours of the Night (Daniel Hui, 2024)

Daniel Hui's fourth feature Small Hours of the Night—which screened at the most recent edition of the London Film Festival—received its world premiere at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it played in the Harbour strand alongside the likes of Michael Gitlin's The Night Visitors, NZ coming-of-age tale (and festival opener) Head South, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's horror The Soul Eater, and Damien Hauser's After the Long Rains.  The last of these films joined the 16mm-shot Small Hours of the Night at this year's LFF, but while the IFFR saw these two titles as stablemates (in the admittedly wide-ranging Harbour), the LFF placed the films in separate strands, with After the Long Rains assigned to Journey and Small Hours of the Night occupying a berth in Experimenta.

Inspired by the tombstone trial of Tan Chay Wa, Hui's film is a 60s-set two-hander that pits Irfan Kasban's nameless interrogator against Vicki Yang's Vicki.  As per the title, much of Small Hours of the Night appears to take place over the course of one long, dark night as the official quizzes his prisoner on various incidents, some of which are actually from the future.  For Small Hours of the Night is a film in which time is slippery, à la the work of Alain Resnais, and in one sequence—as impressive as it is eerie—Vicki watches a clock face on which the minutes tick by as normal, yet the date changes every few seconds.  The interrogator seems not entirely unsympathetic towards Vicki—think O'Brien's relationship with Winston in Orwell's 1984 (a tale set just one year on from Tan's trial).  

Small Hours of the Night is perhaps one of the more accessible examples of experimental cinema, but it's still a demanding film, one that requires much patience and attention.  While both of the actors put in strong performances, plenty is asked of them; the story largely unfolds in a single location, and Hui's dialogue isn't always able to keep the odd lull at bay.  The film invites us to read around what it presents; for example, it's fairly clear that Yang is playing a composite character, but what isn't obvious is that several figures from the tombstone trial have been incorporated into this persona.  Despite its aura of disconnect and frequent temporal shifts, those who stay the course will be rewarded by this haunting film, whose cathartic conclusion proves that even the darkest night is followed by dawn.  

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

68th London Film Festival (9/10/24–20/10/24)

The 68th BFI London Film Festival closed on Sunday 20th October with the European Premiere of Morgan Neville’s Piece by Piece (pictured above), a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams, all told through the lens of LEGO animation. In addition to Neville and Williams, the event was attended by an exciting array of special guests from the worlds of music, fashion and sport. The Closing Night Gala took place at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, which returned as the festival’s Headline Gala and Special Presentation venue for a fourth time since its inaugural year in 2021.

Placing audiences at the heart of the festival, the winners of this year’s LFF Audience Awards, as chosen by members of the public, were announced yesterday. Darren Thornton’s funny and heartwarming comedy drama Four Mothers, about one Irish son juggling four very different mothers, took the Audience Award for Best Feature; Holloway, which follows six women who were formerly incarcerated at what was once the largest women’s prison in Europe, was the winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary; and Two Minutes won the Audience Award for Best Short Film.

The 68th edition welcomed more than 815 international and UK filmmakers, immersive art and extended reality artists and series creatives to present their work at venues across the capital. The festival kicked off with a press conference for the world premiere of Opening Night Film Blitz led by Steve McQueen. The festival’s highly anticipated series of Screen Talks included acclaimed filmmakers Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, Mike Leigh, Denis Villeneuve, remarkable acting talents Lupita Nyong’o and Zoe Saldaña (star of Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez, pictured below), as well as the versatile Daniel Kaluuya.

The festival featured an exciting range of 252 titles (comprising features, shorts, series and immersive works) hailing from 79 countries, and featured 63 languages. All features and series screened to UK audiences for the first time, including 38 World Premieres, 12 International Premieres (6 features, 4 shorts, 2 immersive) and 21 European Premieres (17 features, 1 series, 3 shorts). Across the programme, including events for industry delegates and the immensely popular LFF for Free programme, the festival had 230,342 attendances, the highest in-person attendance in the last ten years.

Source/images: BFI

Hexham Heads (Mattijs Driesen / Chloë Delanghe, 2024)

As far as northern English Forteana is concerned, the case of the Hexham Heads is right up there with that of the Solway Firth Spaceman; barely 40 miles separate the sites of these bizarre events, which occurred in 1971 and 1964 respectively.  While the Solway Firth incident focused on a picture of what may or may not have been a photobombing alien, the Hexham affair involved something more tangible, namely a pair of stone heads that were unearthed by young brothers Colin and Leslie Robson.  Following the boys' discovery in the back garden of their home, a series of strange goings-on affected both the Robson household and the neighbouring Dodd family; this continued until the heads were offloaded.

While the heads' next custodian, Dr Anne Ross, was able to bring an academic's eye to the party—she was of the opinion that they were artefacts of ancient Celtic origin—her family also experienced the joys of residual haunting; as was the case with the Robsons, domestic order was restored upon the jettisoning of the creepy crania.  The heads' whereabouts are currently unknown, which only elevates a mystery that is now explored in Belgian-British experimental effort Hexham Heads.  Screening today as part of the BFI London Film Festival programme Right in the Substance of Them a Trace of What Happened, this curious, striking work plays like a folk horror run through a filter of stone tape theory.

The medium-length Hexham Heads starts out as a fairly linear endeavour, with co-director Chloë Delanghe's measured voiceover guiding us through the story of the heads' excavation—and subsequent eventful stay—at 3 Rede Avenue, the Hexham property where the Robsons lived; it's a fine précis, one that appears to be setting things up for an investigation into the various paranormal phenomena associated with the noggins.  What follows, however, is a haptic, fragmented piece that conjures a needling atmosphere worthy of such a juicy slice of oddball folklore.  Via an eerie succession of 16mm, VHS and still images, all set to Sam Comerford's unsettling score, the film achieves a cumulative, nightmarish quality.

While the movie's title is undoubtedly prosaic, Delanghe and Mattijs Driesen's treatment of the subject matter is anything but.  Hexham Heads drinks from the same well as Mark Jenkin's Enys Men and Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink—arguably the two most prominent examples of experimental horror in recent years—and like the latter work, it contains a top-class jump scare.  As the film draws to a close, it takes us back to a near-deserted cement plant that was glimpsed fleetingly in the opening scenes, the implication being that there's a pretty mundane explanation for all this.  Still, such airy reassurances count for little in the preceding half-hour, when the fever dream that is Hexham Heads exerts its clammy grip.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI 

Soundtrack to a Coup d'État (Johan Grimonprez, 2024)

Dag Hammarskjöld, the erudite Swedish diplomat and economist who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, was catapulted into global politics during a turbulent period of cold war tensions and decolonisation struggles.  Hammarskjöld established the first UN peacekeeping forces during the Congo Crisis, a proxy conflict that forms the basis of Belgian-Dutch-French documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'État.  While Dag Hammarskjöld is indeed a key player in the film, the main focus of this highly compelling work is Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese leader who was assassinated in January 1961 (Hammarskjöld's own premature demise came a mere eight months later).

Curiously, the Swede's suspicious death in a plane crash isn't covered here, perhaps because that knotty subject is worthy of a film of its own.  Soundtrack to a Coup d'État—which screens today at the BFI London Film Festival—emerges as a thorough exploration of the complex relationship between jazz music and the political turmoil of the cold war, with particular emphasis on the events surrounding Congo's independence from Belgium.  Directed by the Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez (Double Take, Shadow World), the documentary is bookended by the moment when jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach gatecrashed the UN Security Council in order to protest the killing of Lumumba.

Grimonprez's essay film isn't simply a dry retelling of historical events, but rather presents a narrative that splices the genre of jazz with anticolonialism.  It portrays how the music became a medium for expressing solidarity with the oppressed; the soundtrack, which features numerous legendary jazzmen and women (Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk), encapsulates both the spirit of resistance and the thirst for change.  The film also considers the roles of the US, the UN and others during the decolonisation process, noting the vagaries of geopolitics and the fight for control over the mineral-rich Belgian Congo—a country that supplied most of the uranium for the Manhattan Project.

The film includes fine archival footage of US jazz icons, and highlights how some of these artists were used as unwitting decoys as the CIA set about meddling in post-colonial Africa.  Perhaps the most infamous of these episodes, detailed here, saw "jazz ambassador" Louis Armstrong visit the African continent, where his performance in Léopoldville provided a smokescreen that allowed for intelligence to be gathered on Lumumba; while Satchmo was still on his tour, the man who had served as the DR Congo's first prime minister was killed by firing squad.  Soundtrack to a Coup d'État isn't always entirely successful in its attempts to conflate jazz with politics, but it is immaculately assembled and thoroughly absorbing.

Darren Arnold

Images: Flanders Image

When the Light Breaks (Rúnar Rúnarsson, 2024)

Directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson (Volcano, Echo), Dutch co-production When the Light Breaks (Ljósbrot)—which received financial backing from Revolver Amsterdam and the Netherlands Film Fund's Production Incentive—screens tomorrow as part of this year's BFI London Film Festival.  The film explores the complex theme of bereavement as it follows young art student Una (Elín Hall), who struggles to come to terms with the sudden death of her bandmate Diddi (Baldur Einarsson)—one of many people confirmed as killed in a catastrophic road tunnel fire (an agonising wait in a Red Cross centre precedes this news).

Bookended by sunrise and sunset—both of which are captured, quite beautifully, by Swedish cinematographer Sophia Olsson—the story unfolds over the course of a single day, one that marks a turning point in Una's life.  The film's striking opening sequence features late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson's (Sicario, Mandy) haunting "Odi et Amo", which promptly establishes the tone for the tale of love and loss that follows (while one of the film's main characters wears a t-shirt sporting the logo of Jóhannsson's compatriots Nyrst, the black metal band are not heard on a soundtrack that tends to remain on the mellow side).

As the film progresses, we witness Una's battle to internalise much of her grief; unbeknown to anyone else, she and Diddi were much more than just bandmates.  This internal conflict is exacerbated by Una's incipient friendship with the openly bereft Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir), Diddi's long-distance girlfriend.  Given the knotty situation, Una sees her mourning reduced—at least in public—to a form of secondhand grief, as she attempts to downgrade her sadness so it appears to be roughly equivalent to that of Diddi's platonic friends, all of whom are navigating these choppy waters with the help of shots, pints, and old home videos.

Yet Una and Klara do form a real connection, with the former relating a thinly coded story about her most recent boyfriend; has Klara understood?  In any case, Una implicitly elevates her status to a level where both women experience a shared sense of loss.  Rúnarsson deftly avoids both melodrama and the obvious, preferring to focus on the fact that a day that began with Diddi in this world will now end without him; the finality of death is conveyed, most poignantly, in the setting sun.  The ending reminded me of that of Éric Rohmer's 1986 masterpiece The Green Ray, which, like this tactile film, was also shot on 16mm stock.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI 

Skincare (Austin Peters, 2024)

Hollywood has long been fascinated with the concept of beauty and the lengths to which individuals will go to maintain it.  Austin Peters' feature directorial debut Skincare takes this obsession as a starting point for a cautionary tale which examines some of the cosmetics industry's often overlooked darker aspects, all the while considering the psychological impact of perceived beauty standards.  Elizabeth Banks plays Hope Goldman, an in-demand yet somewhat broke LA aesthetician whose life descends into chaos when another skincare specialist, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez), opens a salon just across the street. 

When Hope becomes the target of a smear campaign, she suspects Angel of being the perpetrator.  With the help of obsequious life coach Jordan Weaver (Lewis Pullman), Hope attempts to salvage her business and reputation, which have plummeted to the extent that several valuable clients have now deserted her for Angel.  Compounding the situation, an interview on a popular TV show where Hope was set to soft-launch her new skincare line has been cancelled due to the controversy; the resulting scheduling gap is filled by—you guessed it—Angel, whose latest snake oil comes with claims that it can reverse the aging process. 

Skincare is primarily a thriller, but it's also a commentary on the world's fixation with the superficial.  The script, co-written by the director, keeps things moving along at a nice clip, which helps some of the more far-fetched aspects fly under the radar (the film is loosely based on a true story—the case of Dawn DaLuise—that may be even more outré than what is presented here).  Peters is hitherto best known for making music videos, and he scatters a few well-chosen songs, including Queens of the Stone Age's "Millionaire", across a soundtrack otherwise dominated by Kuwaiti composer Fatima Al Qadiri's insistent score.

At once resilient and fragile, worldly-wise and naïve, Hope is a fascinating, compelling character, and Banks' well-judged performance brings a depth to the film that would otherwise be lacking; alas, the rest of the acting is pretty variable.  But there are other plus points, such as the superb cinematography by Christopher Ripley, which captures the sun-kissed locales of 2013 Los Angeles in a way that suggests this beauty is only ever skin deep; the slight but undeniably entertaining Skincare—which screens today at the BFI London Film Festival—invites us all to look beyond the surface as we consider the pitfalls of vanity.  

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI / Gage Skidmore

Eight Postcards from Utopia (Radu Jude, 2024)

The death of Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989—the disgraced tyrant and his wife Elena were tried and executed on Christmas Day—marked a significant watershed for Romania, one which saw the end of communist rule and the start of a tricky transitional period.  As the 1990s progressed, Romania's attempts to get to grips with democracy and market reforms were met with financial instability and widespread unemployment.  But the country weathered the storm and would eventually join both NATO and the European Union—alliances which signalled a new role for Romania on the geopolitical stage.

As directed by Radu Jude and philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz, documentary Eight Postcards from Utopia—which screens today at the BFI London Film Festival—is a coruscating exploration of Romania's rocky economic transition of the 90s.  The film consists entirely of post-communist Romanian television advertisements, with the resulting collage serving as a commentary on the changing consumer habits that emerged in this era.  As per the title, the documentary is split into an octet of thematic segments, each offering a snapshot of late twentieth-century Romanian life as seen through the prism of advertising.

The film's occasionally overlapping structure allows Jude and Ferencz-Flatz to delve into a number of topics, from gender representation to a country groaning under the weight of history as it navigates a new system.  It's a narrative that manages to be at once specifically Romanian and universal as it examines the effects of capitalism and consumerism on the construction of national cultural identity—all done with a complete lack of narration.  The decision to rely on commercials alone to tell the story is a wildly brave one, and it forces viewers to infer their own meanings from the barrage of sights and sounds presented here.

As a record of Romania's choppy passage through the post-Ceauşescu years, Eight Postcards from Utopia conjures up a wonderful sense of time and place, and its experimental form belies an accessible, intuitive experience.  Above all else, this critique of global commerce is wickedly funny, a trait we have come to expect from Jude's work; of course, from our 2024 perspective it's easy to snicker at the fashions of the 90s—just as, in three decades' time, the modish trappings of today will cause much hilarity.  But this fizzing documentary offers up something way beyond cheap laughs: it is a nexus of history, culture and media.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

A Traveler's Needs (Hong Sang-soo, 2024)

Hong Sang-soo's A Traveler's Needs—which screens today at the BFI London Film Festival—is the first of two films this year from the prolific Korean director, whose other 2024 effort By the Stream played at last month's Toronto IFF.  Hong also made a brace of films in 2023—the first of his releases last year was In Water, a work which caused a few ripples on account of it mostly being shot out of focus (moreover, it was barely an hour long—although some viewers may have considered that to be a blessing).  Those still traumatised by that blurry, hazy specatacle will be pleased to learn that A Traveler's Needs, in terms of its form, is much closer to orthodox filmmaking than it is to the (literally) opaque In Water.

A Traveler's Needs stars the incomparable Isabelle Huppert, who here reunites with Hong following their earlier collaborations In Another Country and Claire's Camera.  The film finds Huppert back in East Asia just one year on from her turn in Élise Girard's Sidonie in Japan, and while Girard brought her outsider's eye to that film, which followed the title character on an overseas book tour, Hong is firmly on home soil—both literally and figuratively—with his second-latest picture.  Hong's films are something of an acquired taste, with his low-budget tales of the quotidian as likely to bore as to enthral viewers, but he has a devoted fanbase and is a mainstay at several of the world's leading film festivals.  

Huppert's Iris is a Korean-based Frenchwoman who gives language lessons to locals, and she seemingly has no teaching experience or qualifications.  Her methods are unconventional, to say the least: a typical one-on-one session with Iris sees the student engaging in casual conversation (in English) with their teacher, before Iris homes in on a particular emotion the student has just experienced.  Once these feelings have been verbalised, Iris then proceeds to scribble down a French translation—often with a degree of poetic licence—on an index card.  The student is then instructed to repeat this phrase as often as they can, with the idea being that the recital of such a personal statement will help la langue française sink in.  

The inscrutable Iris has no backstory, and thus seems to exist only in the present; she spends much of what she earns on bibimbap and makgeolli, and her great fondness for the latter becomes something of a leitmotif.  Iris is at the same time present and absent, assured and uncertain, and her dichotomous nature provides no clue as to what her raison d'être might be—is she an agent of chaos, à la Huppert's Caterine in I ♥ Huckabees (who peddles "cruelty, manipulation and meaninglessness"), or up to something much more benign?  What I do know is that I could have watched this enigmatic character all day long; it is only in the moments when Huppert is off screen that the brittleness of Hong's setup is exposed.  

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

London Film Festival 2024: Programme Launch

The 68th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) today announced the full programme line-up, which will be presented in cinemas and online across the UK. Over twelve days from 9–20 October, the LFF will invite audiences to return to its flagship venues in the heart of London – BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, which between them host Galas, Special Presentations and Official Competition titles. Films and Series from all strands of the Festival will screen in many of central London’s iconic cinemas, with global film talent in attendance. A curated selection of features will also be showcased at 9 partner venues across the UK.

Almost every feature and series will screen to audiences in the UK for the very first time, with many shown publicly for the first time anywhere in the world. As in previous years, the feature film programme is organised by strand to encourage discovery and to open up the Festival to new audiences. These are: Love, Debate, Laugh , Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta , Family, Shorts and Treasures. Audiences can also find new and exciting series programming in many of the strands. Premieres include 39 World Premieres (15 features, 2 series, 19 shorts, 3 immersive), 12 International Premieres (6 features, 4 shorts, 2 immersive) and 21 European Premieres (17 features, 1 series, 3 shorts).

World Premieres from filmmakers and artists include: Steve McQueen’s Blitz which opens the festival, Ben Taylor’s Joy starring Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton and Bill Nighy, the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation’s restoration Silent Sherlock, Family Gala That Christmas directed by Simon Otto and starring Brian Cox, Jodie Whittaker and Bill Nighy, Eloise King’s eye-opening investigative documentary The Shadow Scholars, Manchester-set debut feature from Gino Evans Treading Water, and the BFI’s restoration of one of the UK's greatest animated films: Martin Rosen’s Watership Down.

Audiences will enjoy a rich programme of fiction, documentary, animation, artists’ moving image, short film, newly restored classics from the world’s archives, and exciting international works made in immersive and episodic forms. LFF for Free will return to the Festival with a compelling range of talks and short films alongside imaginative, playful events and filmmaker Q&As, in-person at BFI Southbank and at gallery@oxo. The Festival will also be accessible UK-wide via free short films on BFI Player, including the films nominated for Best Short, which viewers will be able to enjoy from 9–20 October.

Source/images: BFI

Queendom (Agniia Galdanova, 2023)

Jenna Marvin, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Jenna stages radical and dangerous performances in public to change people's perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. Queendom is a breathtaking portrait of creative courage. "I’m proud and excited to share this important coming-of-age story of this fearless artist Jenna Marvin who celebrates queerness and fights Putin's regime," states director Agniia Galdanova. "Her art is unique, rebellious, and hopeful, while her life story is urgently timely."

Queendom is produced by Agniia Galdanova and Igor Myakotin with executive producers Jess Search, David France, Arnaud Borges, and James Costa. It is a Galdanova Film production in association with Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, International Documentary Association, InMaat Productions, Doc Society, and Sopka Films. Greenwich Entertainment's Andy Bohn negotiated the acquisition with Submarine's Ben Schwartz on behalf of the filmmakers. The film received its World Premiere at SXSW, followed by screenings at numerous festivals including BFI London Film Festival and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Greenwich will release the award-winning film in cinemas and everywhere you rent films on June 14, 2024.

Source: DMAG PR

Images: BFI

BFI Flare 2024: Days of Happiness

It has now been more than ten years since Chloé Robichaud's debut feature, the well-received Sarah Prefers to Run (Sarah préfère la course), which played in competition for the Sutherland Award at the 2013 London Film Festival.  While Sarah Prefers to Run fell just short of the LFF's award for best first feature—Anthony Chen's Ilo Ilo took that particular honour—it did pick up a prize in Robichaud's native Canada at the same year's Vancouver International Film Festival.  In the gap between Sarah Prefers to Run and Robichaud's latest film Days of Happiness (Les jours heureux)—which screens tomorrow and Monday as part of BFI Flare—the director made the 2016 feature Boundaries (Pays), which cast Marvel star Emily VanCamp as a mediator in negotiations between the Canadian government and a fictional island nation.  Yet Boundaries is not the sum total of Robichaud's efforts from Sarah Prefers to Run through Days of Happiness: the past decade has also seen her undertake some TV work (more on that in a moment) and direct the Venice-premiering short Delphine.

Parallels can be made between Days of Happiness and another Flare 2024 selection, I Don't Know Who You Are: beyond both titles being Canadian films which focus on talented musicians navigating complex relationships in, respectively, Montréal and Toronto, the movies share a trait in that each is made by a filmmaker who previously wrote and directed every episode in a web series.  Just as three seasons of M. H. Murray's Teenagers preceded his I Don't Know Who You Are, Days of Happiness follows Robichaud's Féminin/Féminin, a show that aired on Canada's Ici ARTV from 2014 to 2018.  Days of Happiness sees Robichaud reunite with Sophie Desmarais, who played the title character in Sarah Prefers to Run; here, Desmarais stars as Emma, a young Montréal-based conductor whose career is on the up.  While her exacting work comes with its fair share of complications, it is Emma's life away from the podium that presents the most difficulties, but there are a couple of reasons why she has little chance of keeping things compartmentalised. 

Firstly, her father and agent, Patrick (Sylvain Marcel), is a domineering figure in both Emma's professional and private lives; furthermore, Emma is in an incipient relationship with one of her cellists, Naëlle (Nour Belkhiria), who is also mother to the young Jad (Rayan Benmoussa)—a detail which causes some friction, particularly on Naëlle's end.  Although Emma has achieved some success as a conductor, she is always having to impress her superiors in order to edge up the career ladder; against advice, she chooses a difficult Arnold Schönberg piece for an upcoming concert, and sets about preparing for this taxing performance.  As Emma tries to focus on her work, her relationships with the volatile Patrick and the hot-and-cold Naëlle deteriorate further, and this chaos is folded into the delivery of Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande—a sequence which forms the emotional centrepiece of the film (although a late montage featuring flashbacks to Emma's childhood also proves very moving).  

In her workplace, Emma commands a huge group of musicians, yet her personal life sees everyone else calling the shots (note how, away from the concert hall, it is Naëlle who dictates the parameters of the relationship).  Comparisons can be made between Days of Happiness and Todd Field's Tár—which also centred on a gay female conductor who was attracted to a cellist—although the latter film established Cate Blanchett's title character as one in control of both her life and work, at least up to a point.  But whereas Lydia Tár is largely the author of her own misfortune, Emma is seemingly completely at the mercy of others when it comes to her own happiness.  Robichaud's film feels like both an authentic Montréal tale and a convincing portrayal of the world of classical music (Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the artistic director and principal conductor of the city's Orchéstre Metropolitain, served as the film's music consultant).  Days of Happiness may not be as ambitious in scope as Tár, but it is nonetheless an absorbing work in which Desmarais excels as the tormented maestra.

Darren Arnold

Images: Maison4tiers / BFI

LFF 2023: Gush / Desert Dreaming

Both Gush and Desert Dreaming form part of the BFI London Film Festival's Experimenta strand, where they feature alongside the likes of Filipino filmmaker John Torres' Room in a Crowd and Ukrainian animated tale It Can't Be That Nothing That Can Be Returned.  Experimenta, which traditionally sees the bulk of its screenings crammed into the final couple of days of the LFF, generally throws up some fascinating stuff, often at a point when burned-out festival goers are in dire need of a palate-cleansing experience.  Most of the titles shown in Experimenta present something radically different from the narrative cinema that forms a sizeable percentage of the LFF's fare, and the strand stands as an invigorating part of the festival programme.  You can even buy an Experimenta pass—which admits you to three screenings of your choice—for just £24.

Fox Maxy's debut feature Gush—which screens on Saturday, October 14—arrives at the LFF in the midst of a buzz that has been steadily growing since the film premiered at this year's Sundance, where it played in the New Frontier strand.  Prior to Gush, Maxy directed a number of short films—most notably Maat Means Land, Blood Materials and F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now—and saw her work selected for several international film festivals, including Rotterdam and Toronto.  Yet Gush very much feels like the film Maxy has been building to all along, as it draws from around a decade's worth of the filmmaker's personal footage, much of which predates the earliest of her shorts.  With its frenetic barrage of sounds and colours, the kaleidoscopic, overloaded Gush somehow manages to be at once personal and alienating; while F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now combined similar imagery with a discernible point about the Mesa Grande Indian Reservation, Maxy's latest provides fewer clues as to what the takeaway should be.

It's quite clear that much—if not all—that's presented here holds real meaning for Maxy, yet it is difficult for the viewer to link the various motifs scattered throughout the film's chaotic 71 minutes.  Like many an experimental film, Gush appears to have been made without its consumption in mind, almost as if any consideration of audience might lead to a dilution of the artist's original vision.  Which is not to say that others aren't welcome to come along for the ride, and the suberbly-edited Gush, despite its singularity, makes for an absorbing experience.  Yet Maxy's film will punish anyone looking for a semblance of narrative: while our instincts might tell us to both attempt to join the dots and impose a three-act structure, this slippery film requires a rewiring of cinematic expectations if we are to navigate it without frustration taking hold.  Gush is a bold, fitfully impressive work, one that careens to a memorable conclusion featuring inspired use of The Cure's "The Perfect Girl".

Abdul Halik Azeez's Desert Dreaming screens at the LFF on Sunday, October 15—which marks the close of this year's edition—when it plays as one of five titles included in The Land is the Living Witness, an Experimenta programme centring on colonial histories and migration routes.  Azeez's film is specifically concerned with migration from Sri Lanka to the Middle East, and it begins with a conversation in which a man details his perilous travels through Iran and Pakistan.  While we're listening to this story, we're watching someone carry out some very basic photoshopping, which culminates in figures being pasted against a variety of international backgrounds; as these crudely hewn globetrotters float around, the dialogue is supplanted by music from M. G. Ramachandran's 1973 film World Roaming Bachelor.  As experimental shorts go, Desert Dreaming—like the aforementioned F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now—is a relatively direct example, and as such it stands as a fine entry point into the world of non-narrative film. 

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

LFF 2023: Tótem / Hoeba!

More than three decades ago, Hubert Bals—the late creator and director of International Film Festival Rotterdam—established a fund to support filmmakers in the developing world, who Bals felt were capable of producing great cinema if given the right resources.  Since its inception, the Hubert Bals Fund, or HBF, has assisted in the production of countless critically-lauded films, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, Ciro Guerra's outstanding Embrace of the Serpent, and Carlos Reygadas' Battle in Heaven.  Both IFFR and the HBF have a hand in Lila Avilés Tótem, the director's eagerly awaited follow-up to her 2018 feature debut The Chambermaid, which that was selected as Mexico's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2019 Oscars; while The Chambermaid ultimately failed to land a nomination, the acclaim undoubtedly helped Avilés secure support from the HBF for her latest feature.

Tótem was one of three HBF-backed projects from Latin America to play at this year's Berlinale—where it won the Ecumenical Jury Prize for best film in competition—and it continues to make its way around the world's film festivals with a stop at the BFI London Film Festival, where it screens today in NFT3.  Huub Bals was a firm believer in Latin American filmmakers, and Tótem is a fairly typical example of the sort of cinema the region has been producing under the auspices of the HBF.  Just as the bulk of The Chambermaid's drama unfolded in a single interior location—in that case, a luxury hotel—Tótem centres on a family home, as several generations come together to organise a surprise party.  The celebration is for the 40th birthday of Tonatiuh (Mateo García Elizondo, co-writer of the excellent Desierto), a painter dying of terminal cancer.  Such is Tonatiuh's condition, it is likely that this birthday will be his last.         

Tonatiuh himself is nowhere to be seen for a large chunk of the film, with Avilés instead choosing to focus on other family members, particularly Tonatiuh's seven-year-old daughter Sol (Naíma Sentíes).  Given the amount of people involved—it appears most, if not all, of Tonatiuh's extended family is squeezed into his house for this occasion—some bickering is inevitable, and indeed without it the film would be robbed of much of its dramatic impetus.  Tonatiuh's psychotherapist father Roberto (Alberto Amador) is himself a cancer survivor and, despite remaining largely on the periphery of the preparations, he's a notable presence here, with his sober, cranky demeanour betraying the burden of a parent who will almost certainly outlive their child.  Tótem is a somewhat immaculate work, one that is both lovingly filmed and beautifully acted, yet it never quite delivers the emotional wallop its setup promises.

 

Dutch short Hoeba! (English: Hooba!) is set several thousand years BC in Drenthe, where primeval life in the province—long before cities Assen and Emmen were ever though of—is proving tough for its inhabitants, who lack both food and shelter; while attempting to construct the latter, the former proves most distracting for a small group of primitive men, whose building work comes to an abrupt, calamitous halt as their attention turns to a mischievous rabbit.  Sem Assink's charming, funny and colourful film—a dialogue-free affair which lasts for just a little over two minutes—is bound to get a fine reception when it plays as one of eight titles included in the LFF's Animated Shorts for Younger Audiences, which screens at the festival on Sunday, October 15.   

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

LFF 2023: The Taste of Mango

Chloe Abrahams' striking debut feature The Taste of Mango plays tomorrow as part of this year's BFI London Film Festival, where it screens in competition for the Grierson Award.  Abrahams' film comes up against a strong field of documentaries, which includes Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann's The Klezmer Project, Cyril Aris' Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, and Sav Rodgers' Chasing Chasing Amy.  Yet the film in the documentary competition that The Taste of Mango has most in common with is Lina Soualem's Bye Bye Tiberias: both films are highly personal explorations of their makers' respective relationships with their mothers (in Soualem's case, her mum is famous Palestinian actor Hiam Abbass, who has appeared in the likes of Munich, Blade Runner 2049, Miral and last year's Hellraiser remake).

Abrahams was raised in the UK by her mother Rozana, who moved to England from her native Sri Lanka in order to escape a very specific problem.  While the film's focus is very much on the loving relationship that exists between the director and her mother, Chloe Abrahams widens her scope to involve another generation of her family, who are represented by her grandmother (and Rozana's mother) Jean.  It is through Jean's inclusion that The Taste of Mango takes its darkest turn, as it is revealed that her husband subjected Rozana, his stepdaughter, to years of physical and sexual violence, thus prompting Rozana to leave Sri Lanka when the opportunity arose.  In the years that followed, Rozana, quite understandably, became estranged from her mother, and she still can't fathom why Jean—who is fully aware of the abuse that occurred—remains married to this man.

While Rozana's relationship with Jean has since thawed to the extent that the latter can now visit her daughter and granddaughter in London, it's abundantly clear that much remains unresolved.  On camera, Jean herself comes across as both personable and affable—but it is hard to reconcile this person with the one who has consciously stayed with a man who inflicted such horrors on the young Rozana.  Although several decades have passed, Rozana hasn't completely given up on the possibility that her mother might one day leave her husband; Jean's persistence with the marriage can largely be attributed to that most banal of reasons: the need to maintain appearances.  Rozana is a luminous, wonderfully gracious presence, and both the love and life she's given to Chloe stand in stark contrast to her own terrible experiences back in Sri Lanka.     

Despite the closeness that exists between Chloe and Rozana, The Taste of Mango is also about distance, specifically the silent gap that lies between children and their parents; while the reason for the rupture in Jean and Rozana's relationship is obvious, there's the subtler example of Chloe's frustration as to why her mother won't do more when it comes to addressing the demons of the past.  Then there's the series of tangible gaps we witness early on in the film, as one of Rozana's family albums is littered with empty spaces created by the numerous photos that have been torn to omit her abuser; our eyes are instinctively drawn to the redacted areas.  While the absence of Rozana's stepfather from these pictures serves to highlight his unfortunate impact on her life, this photo album can conversely be viewed as symbolic of the survivor's life today, in which there's only room for the good things.  This is a moving, lyrical and haunting film; don't bet against it walking away with the Grierson Award. 

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI